- Rubicon Contracting accuses former Utah AG Sean Reyes of fabricating trafficking charges.
- The company filed a $1 billion lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution and reputation damage.
- Reyes argues for dismissal citing prosecutorial immunity; Rubicon disputes immunity, claiming evidence fabrication.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Davis County general contracting company once accused of labor trafficking says the former Utah attorney general and his staff "did not investigate a crime. They invented one."
"Defendant Sean Reyes was supposed to be Utah's top law enforcement officer. Instead, he ran the Utah Attorney General's Office like a personal propaganda machine, manufacturing human trafficking charges against innocent people so he could hold press conferences, secure millions in federal and state funding, and distract the public from his increasingly toxic alliance with Tim Ballard, a man under criminal investigation for the very conduct Reyes accused plaintiffs of committing," Rubicon Contracting LLC and its owners, Rudy Larsen and Jena Larsen said in a court fling Wednesday.
"The irony would be poetic if the consequences for the plaintiffs were not so devastating."
In November 2023, the founders and five executive members of Rubicon Contracting were charged with multiple counts each of aggravated human trafficking by the Utah Attorney General's Office. The group was accused of recruiting about 150 people from Mexico to work for the company using H-2B visas. But once in Utah, charging documents alleged that the victims were paid very little and forced to live in deplorable housing provided by Rubicon, while also being forced to pay rent under the threat of deportation.
The charges were later dismissed, however, at the request of the attorney general's office because of a pending federal investigation.
In October, Rubicon filed a $1 billion civil lawsuit in federal court against former Attorney General Sean Reyes; Leo Lucey, Reyes' chief of the criminal investigations division; investigator Michael Adam Jeter; and deputy attorney general Kaytlin Virginia Beckett, who was the lead prosecutor in the case. The lawsuit claims the team "conspired to manufacture bogus criminal charges to falsely inflate the public perception of the severity of human trafficking in Utah. Why? To try and justify the existence of and secure funding for the SECURE Strike Force," which the suit says was Reyes' "pet project."
In February, Reyes responded by saying the lawsuit should be dismissed because "the claims fail on the grounds of absolute prosecutorial immunity, qualified immunity, and failure to plausibly plead direct involvement, supervisory liability, and constitutional violations."
The motion to dismiss contends that all four defendants have either qualified and/or prosecutorial immunity.
In their opposition for the case to be dismissed, Rubicon and its attorneys on Wednesday claim that Reyes turned the legal proceedings against Rubicon into a "made-for-television perp walk designed to convict plaintiffs in the court of public opinion before they ever saw the inside of a courtroom. The charges carried potential life sentences. The warrants froze over $5 million in personal and corporate assets. Three employees were jailed for 11 days on no-bail warrants.
"Reyes appeared in the media calling plaintiffs' lawful employment practices 'subhuman,' a word chosen not because it was accurate, but because it made for a better headline."
But in July 2024, when the judge presiding over the case called for a Franks hearing, "the house of cards collapsed," the motion states.
"Rather than face a dismissal on the merits, the state voluntarily dismissed every single charge and attempted to launder the illegally seized evidence by citing a 'federal investigation,'" Wednesday's court filing states. "And now, having destroyed plaintiffs' hard-won reputations, businesses, finances, and freedom, all based on fabricated evidence, these same defendants stand before this court and demand total immunity from any consequences. That is not a legal argument. That is an attempted cover-up."
Rubicon argues that prosecutors who fabricate evidence are not eligible for prosecutorial immunity.
"Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the 10th Circuit (Court of Appeals) have held that there is no absolute immunity for a prosecutor who participates in fabricating evidence during an investigation in order to build a case to charge," the company states.
Rubicon contends that Reyes and his staff "simply walked away from the damage they caused" while the company, its owners and staffers "were left with the wreckage of their lives, their businesses, and their reputations, not to mention the substantial legal costs and debilitating emotional distress they endured." Because of that, Rubicon argues its lawsuit should not be dismissed.
